


Unforgettable

by Azzandra



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Poison, Post-Canon, Temporary Amnesia, almost dubcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 22:18:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21399538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: Claude accidentally poisons himself with something that erases his memories. He plans to muddle through until it wears off. He sort of almost manages.
Relationships: My Unit | Byleth/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 20
Kudos: 269





	Unforgettable

**Author's Note:**

> After writing about Dimitri temporarily losing his memory, I had a different idea for a fic about Claude doing the same, except for some weird reason it's the Claude fic that turned out angstier by comparison? Yeah, idk.

Claude coughed so hard that his head swam, but by the time the fit had settled down and he managed to wheeze in a full lungful without feeling it stutter in his chest, he realized that maybe he was feeling light-headed for other reasons.

He blinked. He looked around the room, and rubbed at his throat trying to recall what he'd been doing.

Then he froze as he couldn't even recall his name.

Alright. Alright. No need to panic yet. First to figure out his immediate situation. He was in a small room, made more cramped by a table filled with alchemical paraphernalia and open books. A shattered flask on the ground indicated why he might have been coughing. He'd inhaled something. Probably a very bad sign that he couldn't remember anything.

His eyes fell to the open books and sheets of paper, and he at least found what he assumed were his notes. He'd been working on some kind of poison that affected memory, rendering its victim haplessly forgetful. The list of expected side-effects neatly bullet-pointed on the page at least didn't have anything nasty in its contents that he was going to have to immediately worry about. The coughing and wheezing had already passed, probably in no small part to the open window near the ceiling showing a scrap of the darkening sky.

So whatever had happened here, he'd done to his own damn self.

Great, he was an idiot.

The notes said the expected duration for the memory loss was eight to twelve hours. So, temporary, but inconveniently long. For him, at least. He'd probably have felt differently if the poison had dosed whatever poor bastard it had been intended for.

He eyed the door. He could step out, go and find a bed, sleep off the effects, and be back to normal by the next day.

But.

What kind of man designed poisons, unless it was someone with enemies?

And how safe would someone with enemies be, stepping out into the unknown, at the mercy of anyone he couldn't remember to guard against? He looked himself up and down, finding himself tragically unarmored. Light gold-patterned trousers and a silk shirt. A jacket hung on a peg by the door, but rather than offer any protection, he suspected he would be bundling it up and using it for a pillow soon, because it was looking like he was going to spend the night in this room.

An uncomfortable situation, but survivable. He was going to be laughing about this in the morning.

And he would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the knock at the door.

He froze in place, absolutely still and quiet, hoping whoever it was would assume the room was empty and leave. However, as he looked down, he realized his act might not work because the lamp behind him cast his shadow in such a way that it could be visible through the crack under the door. Would the person at the other side be clever enough to notice? They wouldn't need to be all that smart if he moved at this point.

Then the muffled voice came through.

"Claude, it's me."

Claude. That was him. He was sure that had to be him. But the drop-in visitor gave no name, implying it was someone he was likely to recognize by voice. So, probably someone safe.

Probably.

Still, things might end worse for him if whoever was looking for him decided to barge in, so he arranged his face in the most innocuous expression he could conjure, and opened the door.

The woman at the other side looked at him with large, green eyes and a curious tilt to her head. The circlet on her forehead, the navy cape around the shoulders, and the intricately-embroidered clothing she wore indicated some degree of importance, even though at the moment he couldn't remember who she was or why she was important. She was also several inches shorter than him, but even without the regalia, there was still an air of authority to her that had him wary of crossing her.

"Are you still here?" she asked. "I thought you'd be the one hunting me down by this hour."

"Oh... lost track of time," he said, with a sheepish shrug. "Sorry about that."

He could see the lie land easily, and be accepted at face value. The woman nodded, and reached out to take his arm. He had to suppress the panicked instinct to pull back, and let himself be gently dragged out of the room. The door slid shut behind him, closing off any path of return. He was forced--by circumstance, if nothing else--to fall into step next to her.

She did not cling to his arm tightly, though she led him along. Her fingers were barely a whisper against his skin as they pressed along the inside of his forearm, sliding up to the cuff of his his rolled-up sleeve, and then following an idle path back down again. If he focused on this and nothing else, the sensation might even be pleasant. 

But his heart hammered in his chest as he tried to memorize the corridors they were taking. He didn't know where they were going, or to what end, except it seemed it was something agreed beforehand, and he was probably going to have to bluff his way through some new, unexpected situation. 

He considered the relative merits of simply bolting, leaving this frightening woman behind and baffled as he found some nice, quiet place to hunker down for the night. But he had no way of knowing if that was going to make things much worse for him in the long run, and so his mind spun with half-baked schemes that he had to discard only because the consequences were beyond his current knowledge.

He was going to have to play this one by ear.

"You're awfully quiet tonight," the woman spoke suddenly, giving him a sidelong look.

Shit, what kind of small talk would he even be able to make in this situation. 'Nice night to stroll down memory lane?' Ugh, awful. Instead he grinned at her.

"Are you saying I usually talk too much?" he asked, putting a hand to his chest and comically feigning affront. "Because I assure you, I have absolutely no memory of that!"

For such a serious-looking woman, this strategy seemed to work; the corner of her mouth twitched upwards, and she gave a fond little 'oh, you' roll of the eyes, like this sort of repartee was common for them. At least his instincts didn't steer him wrong about how to approach this situation. He had no way of gauging the danger in his state, but then, the clues were all there, weren't they? Who would he be mixing poisons for, if not the scary lady in charge? 

He was relieved he didn't have to try at conversation again, because they passed a pair of guards with a nod and then clambered up to what had to be her quarters.

The room was expansive, opulently decorated in that way that suggested it had been so since long before its current occupant was born. He followed the woman inside, and dawdled at to the foot of the bed, staring at the ceiling and at the mural of some woman in the sky. He was trying to stamp down his panic or, failing that, hide it better.

But, well, memory or not, he could still put two and two together, couldn't he? One bed in the room. Past sunset, and she'd brought him here like this was regular. Apparently mixing poisons wasn't the only service he rendered.

She'd turned away to remove her cape and her circlet, put away the sword she'd had at her hip, but the reprieve was over and her attention returned to him. She walked towards him, not just closer, but close, right up to him, standing less than an arm's length away and looking up at him.

He couldn't just ignore her, so his gaze dropped from the ceiling and fell to trace the exposed curve of her shoulders. His attention latched onto the blotch of purple standing stark against her otherwise creamy skin, and-- yep, that was a hickey, right at the juncture where her neck and shoulder met. That was definitely a hickey. He couldn't just assume he was the one responsible for that one, but given the context clues, that was probably more wishful thinking than anything.

She expected... something from him, then. He had to make some kind of move, play it cool. So he raised his hand to skim light touches up her arm, and out of some morbid fascination, even traced a thumb over the hickey.

She sighed, tilted her head back to give him better access. But when he finally screwed up the courage to look her in the eye, he didn't meet some half-lidded gaze, or eyes darkened with lust. The look in her eyes was searching, a slight frown crinkling between her brows.

"Are you going to tell me what's wr--"

She didn't finish asking the question, because in one smooth, panicked motion, he cupped her face between his hands, and smothered the words with a kiss. He swallowed the small, surprised sound she made, and continued to drag hot wet kisses from her mouth, keeping it occupied with anything but questions.

Did this feel familiar? He couldn't remember, but his body certainly thought so. Almost reflexively, one hand slipped to the nape of her neck, fingers delving into her hair, and his other arm went to loop around her waist, pulling her flush against him. The stitch of cold fear in his belly ripped into a sharp heat instead, spurring him on. He could keep this going until morning if he had to, and he might well have to.

But he had to come up for air eventually, breathing heavily with what he hoped would get interpreted as lust and not hyperventilation, and she was so well-kissed that she had gone warm and pliant in his arms. Now there was a haziness to her eyes, her lips red and parted as she caught her own breath.

"Claude," she murmured dreamily, and he couldn't help grinning toothily in response. There was a part of him that felt a thrill of pride at rendering her into such a state.

Then she looked up at him, and the sharpness returned instantly to her eyes.

"Was that meant to distract me?" she asked, and before he could even feel a stab of alarm, he felt her pivot her body, hook a foot around his ankle, and shove at his chest.

He went falling back with an undignified squawk, but as the back of his knees hit the edge of the bed, he flopped down gracelessly onto the mattress, instead of sprawling to the floor.

She crossed her arms, crowded closer until her own knees were pressed against the edge of the bed between his legs, and she loomed over him with a kind of menace that made something hot coil in his belly. As he propped himself up on his elbows, he almost expected her to descend on him, but she stood watching him instead.

"Will you tell me what's wrong? You've been off since we left your lab," she said.

He found himself speechless, for longer than he intended, the blood rushing in his ears as he tried to think of some way out of this situation. Yet, before he could do anything--crack a joke, or offer some ambiguous statement she might interpret anyway she wished--her expression softened. Her eyes went sad.

"Please tell me if I did something wrong," she said, gentle and sincere in a way that completely disarmed him.

The realization felt like getting dunked with cold water; he'd misinterpreted something from the start. She uncrossed her arms, made to move away, but he grabbed her forearms before she could go too far.

"No!" he said. "I-- I'm the one who did something stupid."

The truth poured out of him, even as the back of his throat felt acid-hot with embarrassment. But he told her--about getting dosed with his own poison, about being surprised by her appearance and going along with her because he had no better plan. Every word filled her with mounting horror, until the words clogged in his throat and he finished his explanation clumsily.

"Claude," she said, cupping his face, "were you just going to sleep with me because you were scared?"

"Nah, come on," he said, grinning up at her. "I was going to sleep with you because you're hot."

She didn't smile this time. Her distress was palpable, and the fact that it was on his behalf made it unbearable, but he couldn't smooth out her brow with a joke this time. It was a bridge too far for her, and he realized the moment the wisecrack had left his mouth. She sat down, dropping next to him on the bed like her worry was a sack of boulders weighing her down, and she leaned her head against his shoulder.

She sat like that for a long time; enough that it frayed his nerves a bit.

"I suppose you can't remember," she muttered eventually, "that I know what your genuine smiles look like."

Hearing that gutted him worse than he thought it would. It meant there was something genuine he might have ruined between them in his desperate ploy to hide his vulnerability. He brought his arm up around her back, slipping his hand to the nape of her neck. He rubbed fingers through the fine hair there, in slow soothing strokes.

"I'll be fine," he found himself promising. "Just need to sleep it off, and I'll be back to my old self by morning."

She reached out to take his free hand, grasping it tight.

"The only thing I want is to keep you safe until then," she said.

"I believe you," he whispered. 

If there was nothing else between them, there was at least this one secret they could share for now. 

He really believed her.

**Author's Note:**

> Research into fear responses indicate that, apart from the ones people know about (fight or flight), there are two additional categories: freeze and appease. The freeze response is exactly what it sounds like. It's when someone just locks up in the face of danger.
> 
> But appease is... harder to describe. It's more like when someone tries to be friendly towards the person scaring them (such as smile when they're uncomfortable, or, say, have sex with someone because it feels like the safest option in a scary situation). The appease response is also called 'fawn' (as in fawning over someone), so... make of that what you will.


End file.
